


Do You Ever Really Crash or Even Make a Sound?

by Princessfbi



Series: Waving Through A Window [3]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Athena deserves all the Mother's Day Love, BAMF Athena Grant, Buckley Parents - Freeform, Buckley Pinky Promises, Date Nights, Encouraging Firefam, Firefam Feels, Flowers, Getting Together, Gun Violence, Hurt Evan "Buck" Buckley, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Toxic Relationships, Implied/Referenced Violence, Insecurity, Mother's Day, Motherhood, Near Death Experiences, Not all is what it seems, Parents Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han, Pregnancy, Protective Maddie Buckley, Referenced Past Racism, Referenced Systematic Racism, Retribution, Soft Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Stalking, Whumptine 2020, Worried Maddie Buckley, suffocation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26455855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princessfbi/pseuds/Princessfbi
Summary: Everything ached. Everything. The pulse of his heart rate thundered in each of his joints and collapsed down each limb like he was pinned with concrete.It hurt. He hurt and he was stuck in the molasses of shock and pain that kept him nailed to the floor.“I told you to be quiet.”Buck didn’t even realize he’d been groaning until the sound choked off deep in his throat and the sizzling of the taser sent him falling back into darkness again.
Relationships: Athena Grant/Bobby Nash, Evan "Buck" Buckley & Athena Grant, Evan "Buck" Buckley & Maddie Buckley, Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han
Series: Waving Through A Window [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1721746
Comments: 27
Kudos: 389
Collections: 9-1-1 Tales





	Do You Ever Really Crash or Even Make a Sound?

**Outgoing call: Mom**

**Outgoing call: Mom**

**Outgoing call: Mom**

_“Hey Mom, it’s B-Evan. I uh… I got your cards… and the cookies… Thank you for that. Um…Sorry I haven’t called in a while. I’ll uh… I guess, I’ll call you later._

_…_

_Thank you. Again. For the cards._

_They were really nice._

_…_

_Love you.”_

****

**Maddie:**

**_Let me know how it goes tonight!_ **

“I still can’t believe that just happened,” Chim said as he held the door open to his apartment for Maddie.

Maddie’s face was set in that unimpressed flatness that, to be honest, was just as intimidating as the furious expression she’d had in the appointment.

“I still can’t believe that, that doctor seriously wanted to shame you into marrying me before the baby started to show. I mean this is LA. There are Amish people more evolved than that where I grew up!”

Chim snorted as the flash of Maddie and Buck dressed as Amish people appeared in his imagination. He waved off Maddie’s confused glance and worked on unloading their bags of lunch options on the table. Ever since they’d found out Maddie was pregnant, the pregnancy cravings turned into overdrive along with the morning sickness. Buff-Friday eventually became Buff-Lunch for whenever Maddie was too hungry to decide. Given that their appointment with the potential OBG-YN was a failure of epic proportions, Chim had offered to drive around Los Angeles to pick up the few things Maddie had been craving which meant tacos, frozen yogurt, soup dumplings, and a very specific spinach and artichoke dip.

“Is that---” Chim started and then stopped.

Maddie was the love of his life and the mother of his unborn child. He would walk the moon if she asked. But they were still just getting used to the eggshells under their feet turning into solid ground. The doctor had been an ass, shaming not only Chim for knocking Maddie up without a ring on it but, for shaming Maddie into “allowing” herself at “her age” to be in the situation of an unexpected pregnancy.

But… he did plant the idea in Chim’s head all the same.

Maddie turned to him with a frown and pushed her hair out of her face as it curled from the spring heat.

“What?”

“Is that what you want?” Chim asked. “I mean… would that be something you would be interested in?”

Maddie tilted her head with a smile and abandoned her taco for his hand but she stayed quiet a little longer than Chim would've liked as she chewed on her words, tasting them first. He braced himself for the heavy settling of rejection in the shape of a brick forming in his stomach. 

“Marriage,” she said with a heavy sigh. “Not really. I mean… with Doug it was an entire production. Everything was a show and… it wasn’t a commitment. It was a trap. You know?”

Chim nodded even though he couldn’t help but feel the lingering coils of disappointment.

“But,” Maddie said, pressing into his hand. “Marrying you? Absolutely.”

Chim felt a grin pull on his face as his heart looped in his chest. “Really?”

“Really.” Maddie smiled. “But not because of the baby, okay? We’ll do it when it feels right. Not because people pressure us into anything.”

And if Chim could have fallen any more in love with her, he did right then and there. He would marry Maddie in a heartbeat but that didn’t mean he was ready to go down on one knee yet. Maddie met him halfway and gave him a kiss that still sent thrills of warmth to bloom in his chest.

“Though,” Maddie added as she returned to her taco. “I can’t guarantee Buck will be in a tux anytime soon. I made him a pinky promise at my last wedding that I wouldn’t make him wear one ever again.”

Chim laughed as he opened the soup dumplings and took one out of the take-out containers before Maddie ate them all.

“I’m surprised you even got him in one at all,” Chim said.

Buck dressed pretty well but the only time Chim had ever seen Buck in anything remotely fancy had been the suit he wore for his date with Abby and even then, he’d been fidgeting the whole time. Maddie grimaced as she took her plate to the table.

“It wasn’t really me. My dad and Doug kind of bullied him into it or, at least, I’m pretty sure Doug said something to him but he never told me what.” Maddie shook her head. “I was fine with him just wearing a tie. I knew he was already uncomfortable as it was. I didn’t see the point in adding to it.”

Chim frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you know with boys." Maddie shrugged. "He’d just gone through a major growth spurt and the baby fat was gone. He was seventeen and uncomfortable with his body.”

“That I find hard to believe.”

“Well, believe it. It was better when he went back to school for senior year and everybody was fawning over him but… I don’t know. Buck was awkward and kind of shy and my parents weren’t exactly encouraging and Buck wasn’t--- _isn’t_ his own greatest advocate.” Maddie sighed and rubbed her hand over her stomach. She wasn’t even close to showing yet but the gesture was soothing nevertheless. “Sometimes, I feel like I was the excuse my parents used to just not try anymore. I didn’t believe in Santa so no need to put on the charade. Not like there was a six year old around who might want to believe in Santa a little longer. God, my mother used to dress Buck and I up like we were dolls for Thanksgiving and it was only because we were going to her sister’s house and if she didn’t my aunt would’ve made some snide comment about it. They just dumped us all in the backroom to watch TV anyways.”

Maddie bit her lip and shook her head as her eyes grew misty. That was still something to get used to for Chim. The Buckleys’ wore their emotions freely and hid them just as obviously but he hated to see Maddie cry. Now, that they knew that her hormones were wreaking havoc Maddie seemed to cry at almost anything. The other day, Chim had caught her crying about an iHop commercial. But that didn’t change the fact that he hated it and the overwhelming urge to fix it almost swallowed him whole.

He opened his arms and Maddie fell into them readily. “I don’t want to be like that Chim. Sure, we didn’t plan this but I don’t want to be convenient parents.”

“We won’t be.” He promised and pressed a kiss to the top of her head, inhaling the scents of jasmine and lavender from her shampoo.

“Pinky promise?” Maddie sniffed as she lifted her pinky finger.

Chim laughed and latched onto her pinky with his own because if there was anything the Buckleys’ took seriously, it was their pinky promises.

“I promise. Everything is going to be okay.”

* * *

**Chim:**

**_Good luck on the date tonight Buckaroo!_ **

**_Call your sister before she goes crazy._ **

**_Or makes me crazy._ **

****

Everything ached. Everything. The pulse of his heart rate thundered in each of his joints and collapsed down each limb like he was pinned with concrete.

It _hurt._ He hurt and he was stuck in the molasses of shock and pain that kept him nailed to the floor.

“I told you to be quiet.”

Buck didn’t even realize he’d been groaning until the sound choked off deep in his throat and the sizzling of the taser sent him falling back into darkness again.

* * *

**Athena:**

**_Call me if you need any help tonight._ **

****

If you’d told Bobby that he would be where he was--- shopping for flowers and groceries with his beautiful wife’s ex-husband--- he would’ve laughed in your face and then probably laughed some more.

“All right,” Michael said, looking down at their list. “I spoke with the florist and they’re going to deliver the flowers at the precinct at 9:45 which will be just in time for Athena’s second coffee stop for the morning.”

“Great,” Bobby said. “I’ve got the stuff to make her lunch. Are you okay with taking the kids? I know---”

Michael waved Bobby off before he could get started. “It’s not a problem. Besides, you have your hands full with that waffle buffet.”

No one would’ve looked at Athena Grant with her hard mouth and all-seeing no-nonsense stare and would’ve guessed that the police sergeant had the sweet tooth that would’ve rivaled a nine-year-old in a candy store. The buffet had been the kids’ idea. Athena had to work all of Mother’s Day and wouldn’t be back until late. No one really wanted to eat a four-course meal at midnight anyway. But the waffle buffet would be the perfect in between of a meal together and something sweet to catch Athena’s craving before she slept off her shift.

Besides, Bobby’s waffles kept pretty well. If there were any leftovers, he could easily pack them away and bring them to the firehouse at his next shift.

It’d been a while since his team had all had a holiday off. If he had the time, he wanted to go all out for the woman who deserved everything and more.

* * *

**Bobby:**

**_You got this, kid._ **

**_Buck is typing..._ **

Maddie groaned as she finally felt steady enough to leave the bathroom. Morning sickness was a lie. For Maddie, it was morning, afternoon, and nighttime sickness. Fortunately, she only had a few more weeks of her first trimester to go before the sickness should start to ease up a bit in her second semester.

To be perfectly honest, she was more relieved for Chim than she was herself. For a trained paramedic, Chimney didn’t exactly handle Maddie being sick most of the day well. When he wasn’t freaking out about hyperemesis gravidarum, he was piling her with water and ginger candies and buckets and crackers and more water.

It was adorable but also, she was hoping that he would get to enjoy her pregnancy a little bit too.

And he certainly wasn’t when Maddie’s head was trapped in a toilet bowl.

She answered her phone without checking the screen first--- a feat she never thought she would get to after years of screening Doug’s calls--- and went in search for the ginger lemon tea Chimney had found on one of his prenatal shopping binges.

“Hello?”

“Maddie,” her mom’s voice rang through the speaker with a put-upon sigh she was barely hiding.

“Hi Mom,” Maddie said with a sigh of her own that always made her mom tut her tongue against the top of her mouth.

Maybe she should get back into the habit of screening her calls.

It wasn’t that she was surprised that her mother called but a call from Jessica Buckley was unexpected all the same. And it wasn't like hearing from her mom was unwanted but Maddie and her mom always had a way of pushing each other's buttons until one of them snapped and hung up the phone. She didn’t know about the baby yet and if she was going on another vacation she wouldn’t have bothered with a phone call. Buck and Maddie usually found out where their parents were with a post from Facebook and an abundance of pictures taken on a cliffside or some gigantic boat. Before Facebook, Maddie would usually find out her parents were gone when she came home and found Buck alone.

“Hi honey,” her mom said in another exhalation. “Listen, I don’t have long to chat but would you stop sending your brother cards and telling him they’re from me?”

Maddie frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“I think you know.” Her mom hummed. “Now, look, it’s sweet that you want to send your brother something but I don’t need you signing my name for me. I’m the parent, remember?”

On any given day Maddie would’ve rolled her eyes at that. Her mother often said that whenever Maddie would “lecture” her about her shortcomings when it came to her idea of parenting. One of those times had ended in Maddie and her mother not speaking to each other for weeks when her parents had brought in a severely dehydrated, feverish Buck to the hospital because he’d been left to fend for himself with the flu.

But she didn’t roll her eyes that time.

Maddie froze.

Her mother was still rambling on the phone, completely unaware that her daughter was stunned into silence.

“You both know I love you. I don’t need to be sending cards to say it and really honey. Cards? No one sends those anymore.”

“What do you mean I’ve been sending him cards?” Maddie asked. “You haven’t been sending them?”

“Of course not!”

Maddie clasped onto the phone tight. “But what about the cookie bouquet?”

“Why would I do that?” Her mom scoffed. 

Stunning awareness prickled along Maddie's spine. Her mom hadn't sent Buck the cards? The handwriting hadn't looked the same. Similar but not quite right that it'd taken her notice when Buck had shown her the card two days ago. Her mom hadn't sent Buck the cards. 

But that meant...

“Maddie,” her mother asked, concern lacing her tone for once. “Is everything okay?”

But Maddie was too sick with the devastating realization to even try to pacify the rare glimpse of worry from her mother.

“I have to go,” Maddie said and hung up the phone before her mom could get a word in edgewise.

Her mom hadn't sent the cards.

Poor Buck.

* * *

**Eddie:**

**_Need any help for tonight?_ **

Being a woman was hard work. Being a woman in a “man’s field” was even harder. Athena had to prove every single day she put on her uniform that she was more than capable and worthy of her badge. A badge that should stand as a symbol of protection and safeguarding. There was a reason they called their badges shields. It was her job to find someone facing danger and stand in front of them. It'd been the belief that Emmett had spoken so passionately about when she'd met him that night over dinner to talk more about the sales pitch in a pamphlet he'd given her. She'd grown up her whole life being told by others what her worth was but she'd seen the history. She'd seen the way that some people used their badges to hide their prejudice and bigotry; to justify themselves when nothing else worked; to use their badges as battering rams rather than the shields they were meant to be. 

She'd seen Rodney King on the concrete, bloody and beaten, and finally started running to catch up after she'd let the world turn without her when Emmett had died. 

Being a cop and a woman meant she had to deal with people underestimating her and proving them wrong with gritted teeth over and over again. It meant that she had to justify her actions doubly so that no one could argue that she let her feminine sensitivities turn hysterical.

And being a black woman?

She was walking across a battle field even without her uniform just because of the color of her skin and the basis of her sex determined so.

Her job was hard. It could be downright draining when you were the only one standing up to a crumbling system and trying to reshape it into what it should be. Sometimes, she felt like she was fighting a battle all on her own. It’d gotten better when Elaine took command as captain but there were still too many steps to be taken to erase inherited behaviors that were only acceptable because a white man said so. When what was precedent and acceptable was like an old infected callous that blistered but refused to come off. There were times Athena felt like she was a Joan of Arc for common decency and one of these days it was going to bite her in the ass.

But the rewards? The rewards were frequent in reminding her why she did what she did. Whether it be the adrenaline of watching Bobby and the team pull off an effortless rescue or dragging in a scumbag in cuffs knowing they would be going away for a long time or seeing one of her former wayward frequent fliers graduate college or even just receiving something as simple as a thank you was enough to keep her going.

But her children… Well, her children were what got her up every morning to do what she did. Her children pushed her forward every single day so that she could clear the way for them to soar.

She may be a police sergeant; she may be a black woman; but she was and always would be, a mother first.

And if anyone wanted to question that then they could take a look at her beautiful flowers sitting on her desk. The peonies were puffy soft pink blooms in comparison to the sharp white petals of the lilies interspersed with sprigs of baby’s breath balanced in a beautiful tall vase. The floral smell sent her head spinning and she hid her face in the flowers to keep the tears at bay as she sniffed them.

There was no question about it. Athena was the luckiest woman in all of Los Angeles.

She waited until she was back in her cruiser with her second cup of coffee and the lingering perfume of the flowers tickling her nose before she called May’s phone.

“Happy Mothers' Day!” May and Harry greeted in messy unison in lieu of an answer.

“Thank you, babies,” Athena said, missing them fiercely. “I loved my flowers.”

“We’re sorry you have to work on Mother’s Day,” Harry said.

“I know. Me too.” The payoff for working on Mother’s Day meant that she got Valentine’s Day off the following February but that didn’t make it any easier. With May going away to college soon, Athena wanted to spend every holiday with them but that just wasn’t possible as a first responder.

“Will I still see you for lunch?” Athena asked.

“We’ll be the ones with the thousands of coolers,” May said. “Dad’s already filled three.”

“Tell your father not to fuss!”

“Too late.”

Athena had absolutely no clue where her children got their dry sense of humor. None.

* * *

**Incoming call from: _Maddie_**

**Incoming call from: _Maddie_**

**Incoming call from: _Maddie_**

**Missed call from: _Maddie_**

****

“Eddie Diaz,” Hen hummed as she held her multicolored supermarket daisies up to her face. “You are raising a charmer.”

Eddie barked out a laugh and shook his head. “Those were all Christopher’s idea.”

“Well,” Hen said with a wistful sigh. “I love them. Karen will love hers too. Thank you.”

She patted the small bouquet of sunflowers nestled safely in the thick cellophane wrap the supermarket had wrapped around them when Eddie and Chris had made their selections that morning.

He tilted his head and glanced out at the playground where Denny and Christopher were currently pretending to climb a mountain and avoiding imaginary avalanches every few minutes.

“I should be the one thanking you,” Eddie said as he watched his kid laugh.

Christopher laughing. Never in a million years did he think that on Mothers’ Day of all days his son would be laughing and carefree. Eddie had been tangling himself in knots for weeks leading up to it, dreading every flier that the school sent home talking about the Mothers’ Day brunch, and wondering what would send his son into the Diaz tailspin Eddie often found himself in whenever the grief turned too sharp. And still his son managed to surprise him. The perseverance was all Shannon.

Hen smiled at him, soft and understanding, and settled a warm hand on his forearm.

“How did it go this morning?” She asked.

Eddie never wanted Christopher to forget about Shannon. In a way, when she’d left those few years, it was easier to ignore her than it was to forget her despite all the anger and resentment. But now that she was gone, Eddie found himself desperately clinging to the wayward memory of her every day so Christopher didn’t have to feel the strain. It’s part of the reason they met up with Hen and Denny at the park. An escape route for when the stone with Shannon's name etched on it felt like it could crumble on top of them.

“It…” Eddie said and swallowed when the sharp tang of tears dried out his throat. “It was… hard. We took some flowers to the headstone and Chris made her a card but it wasn’t as bad I thought it would be.”

“That’s good,” Hen said softly.

Christopher and Denny shouted about yetis as they raced over to the airplanes that creaked back and forth depending on where you put your weight.

“I know,” Eddie said. “I just... I don’t know. I just don’t want him bottle everything up like I do or my dad or whatever. But I don’t want him to be upset either.”

At first, he’d just considered ignoring the day completely and doing whatever he could to distract Christopher. But Hen and Karen and Pepa and Abuela and his _mom_ had all talked him out of it. Things with his mom hadn’t been great but even he knew to listen when she called and reminded him that just because Shannon was gone didn’t mean that Christopher didn’t have a mom to celebrate. And ignoring the day would’ve ultimately been more for Eddie than it would’ve been for Chris.

“I really appreciate all that you and Karen have done for him.” Eddie added with a weak smile.

And it had been a lot. Hen and Karen opened their arms to Christopher without hesitation when his budding friendship with Denny took over. Karen had been the one to explain to Christopher Eddie’s accident with the well. Hen and Karen had offered to immediately step in for all the places that should’ve been reserved for Shannon with bells and whistles like it was the most natural thing in the world.

They stepped up and Eddie noticed and he would be forever grateful for that.

Christopher glanced over with the perception of kid who was too smart to even be related to Eddie and Eddie schooled his face into a grin. Christopher waved and shouted something that Eddie couldn’t quite make out but pretended to understand.

“Boys!” Hen called out when the airplane rocking got a little too enthusiastic. “Be careful please!”

With their eagerness thoroughly squashed, Christopher and Denny moved on to the tunnel system that had puzzles on the inside and a clear globe at the top.

“Well,” Hen said with a squeeze of her hand. “That’s what family is for. Do you boys have plans for tonight?”

“We’ve got lunch with my aunt, Pepa, and then Chris is having a sleepover with my abuela. She said she never got to enjoy Mothers’ Day when my dad was growing up because she was working so she wanted a movie night.”

Secretly, Eddie was pretty sure it was because his abuela knew that Eddie would need a minute to himself but she would never say. If there was one person who knew him more than anyone, it was his abuela. They’d been connected on a different level since he’d been a boy. She’d been the one to encourage him to apply to the fire department to begin with.

She never judged him and he loved her for it.

“That sounds nice,” Hen said with another hum as the sun broke through the early afternoon clouds and warmed their skin. “Karen and Denny have some kind of surprise for me planned out tonight but I can’t get either of them to break.”

“You hate surprises.” Eddie laughed and Hen rolled her head with a nod.

“I do but they love making them so who am I to ruin the fun?” She shrugged. “Chim says it’s because I hate fun which is funny coming from him since the last time Maddie told him she had a surprise, he broke out in hives.”

Eddie snorted. “The Buckleys do love a good surprise.”

“I’ll say,” Hen said with a knowing glance. “You want to tell me who Buck’s mystery date is?”

“Walked into that one, didn’t I?” Eddie winced but Hen’s eyebrow arched high onto her forehead.

“Come on! You really think we didn’t know that if anyone was going to know who Buck’s been seeing, it would be you?”

He could answer. She wasn’t wrong. He did know. But, Eddie was a man of his word.

And it was pretty entertaining watching Chim and Hen argue.

He shrugged. “I’ve been sworn to secrecy. I’m sorry.”

“Lies!”

* * *

**Maddie:**

**_Let me know how it goes tonight!  
_ ** _11:32am_

**_I’m outside. I need to talk to you._ ** _  
03:43pm_

Maddie’s knuckles started to grow sore with how hard she was pounding on Buck’s door but she knew Buck slept like the dead after he came off a twenty-four-hour shift.

“Buck,” she called again, knocking against the door with a persistent rapping of her knuckles. “Buck, we need to talk. Please open the door.”

Nothing.

She should leave him be. Buck had had a rough shift the night before and she knew he always needed a few hours to recharge before he turned on the 'Outside World Buck' like a battery in his chest that could get drained. Plus, he had date he was excited about. More importantly, Buck had a date he was nervous about. That meant something to Buck. But Maddie couldn’t stomach the idea of Buck finding out the truth about the cards from anyone else. She was doubtful that their mother would call him but she didn’t want to take the risk.

“Buck!” She called louder and wincing a little when her voice echoed down the hallway. “Buck, wake up!”

Just when she was about to switch her knuckles to her fist and pulled out her phone to call him again, the door shifted as Buck slid the lock from the inside and opened the door.

Her heart sank as Buck peered through the half opening of his door. His face was pale even in the soft light of the hallway with dark circles that hung under his tired, red eyes. His hair was a chaos of wiry curls and left-over product that stuck to his forehead at odd angles. But his body was slumped against the doorframe and the door, blocking her view of the apartment, and looking terribly hollowed out.

Vacant blue eyes tracked the hallway behind her before sliding up to her face.

“She called you?” Maddie guessed.

But instead of nodding, Buck’s brow furrowed.

“Who?” He asked.

His voice was hoarse and his face was flushed against the worrisome paleness. Maddie frowned.

“Are you okay? You look---” Maddie reached up to feel his forehead with her hand but Buck recoiled with a flinch.

He sniffed and pushed his temple against the doorframe. “I’m fine. Listen, now isn’t a good time, Mads. Can we talk about this later?”

Maddie shook her head. “Did Mom call you?”

“Why would Mom call?” Buck asked with a frown and a stiff shrug.

“I didn’t want you to hear this from her. I tried calling but you weren’t answer.” Maddie paused because she really didn’t want to break the news like this to Buck in the hallway. “Buck… those cards you got... They weren’t from Mom.”

Buck blinked, his face carefully blank, and it took everything in Maddie not to throw her arms around him.

“I don’t understand.”

Maddie sucked in a breath and forced herself to exhale the tension that had settled deep along her spine. She really could throttle her mother for her habit of absentmindedly dropping world shattering bombs. Especially when they pertained to Buck. Maddie had grown up not expecting much from her mom but Buck had never been like that. He loved too freely to ever stop hoping for the morsel approval that should’ve come just as freely from their mother. She hated how their mother would laugh whenever Buck or Maddie were disappointed like they were being silly. Buck had been devastated when their mom couldn't-- wouldn't-- come to stay after the truck bombing. He would never say anything but Maddie knew her baby brother like the back of her hand. And she knew her mother too. It was easier for her to minimize than it was to actually dig into the hard stuff of being a mother. 

But with Maddie, who started to push back when she was a teenager and never stopped pushing, her mother would turn mean and defensive. Buck never pushed that far. He just got used to it and so did their mother.

It was Maddie who seemed to always have to clean up the mess. 

“She called me. She thought I'd sent the cards and I didn’t, Buck,” Maddie was quick to add when a flash of hurt crossed over Buck’s face. “I promise, Buck. I didn’t send them. I would never do that to you but…Mom didn’t send you those cards either.”

“Oh.” Buck dropped his gaze to feet and jerked harshly. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

Buck’s expression fell into the same flat neutral expression that was so not Buck it was like being at the wrong apartment. Buck shrugged and blocked Maddie’s view of the apartment even more with his body.

“Like I said, this isn’t a good time.”

Maddie stepped back. Something was wrong. Buck, who had been vibrating with excitement the night before, was sluggish and tired. He was in the same LAFD shirt he’d been in yesterday. The mustard stain was still on his collar from where he’d spilled it during dinner. There was a tear at the knee of his jeans that hadn’t been there before and his feet were bare when she knew he preferred socks.

Buck always wore socks when he was home. He and Maddie both had feet that were easy to freeze.

It was all so wrong that Maddie was almost dizzy with concern.

“Buck,” she said softly. “Did something happen? I would’ve thought you’d be getting ready for your date.”

“There is no date.”

There was no emotion in his voice but Maddie was too busy trying to process the sudden news.

“What? What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

Maddie startled at the harshness and Buck’s expression broke into something close to apologetic as he shifted his feet.

He was lying and Maddie couldn’t figure out why. Sure, they drifted apart for a few years but Buck never lied to her. He hedged around the truth and tried to side step the collision of a confrontation but he never lied.

“What’s wrong? Like really wrong? Did they say something to you or---”

Buck groaned and closed his eyes as he turned his forehead into the doorframe.

“Maddie! I just want to be alone,” he said from between a clenched jaw but Maddie pushed a little more because the last time she left Buck to wallow in his own misery she didn’t find out how far he’d spiraled into his own loneliness until five years later when he’d become so numb to it that he’d asked her if she thought he was lonely. 

“Okay, well, that makes me even more worried. Buck---”

“Maddie! Would you go away? I want to be alone!” Buck snapped.

Hot anger flushed through her. She and Buck rarely locked horns with one another but the curse of having a sibling that you loved dearly meant that their bite made you want to bark right back.

“No! Not until you tell me what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is I want to be left alone and you’re still here.” A sneer uglied Buck’s face but Maddie was immuned to the pettiness that came whenever Buck was trying to push people away.

“I’m just trying to help…”

“Maddie, I wouldn’t remember what your help looked like if it fell on top of me. You left me, remember? You shut me out when you wanted to go become a wife and you shut me out the moment you started getting your life together again. You can’t keep coming to me just because you’re having trouble with Chim. He’s my superior, Maddie! I’m just someone you hide behind when you can’t stick up for yourself. Maddie’s problems. Maddie’s emergencies. Stop being a pain, Buck. Stop making a scene, Buck. Guess what, Maddie? I learned how to stand for myself without you or Bobby or Athena or anyone else. You couldn’t bother to be there for me when that bomb almost took my leg so don’t bother trying to be here now.”

He could've slapped Maddie and it would've hurt less. Maddie reeled back as if she had been anyways. 

She didn’t even realize she’d started crying until a tear curled around her jaw like a taunting caress. Buck stared at her, clinging to the door frame like his life depended on it, and bit so hard onto his lip he had to be bleeding. He didn’t reach out to her. He didn’t apologize or try to comfort her.

Maddie curled her arms around herself to protect herself from anymore blows that hurt worse than Doug could ever hit.

“Buck…”

Pain flashed across Buck’s face. Desperate and devastated. But he didn’t apologize. Buck just shook his head and started to close the door.

“Please go, Maddie.” He croaked, his voice thin again. “Please _go away.”_

The door slammed in her face before she could argue with a click of the deadbolt sliding into place.

Maddie turned and cried all the way home.

* * *

**Hen:**

**_If you throw me a hint so I can win the bet over Chim I’ll have Karen make her gumbo for you._ **

**_You can’t say no to the gumbo._ **

May had not been kidding about the coolers. Athena fought back a smile at the sight of the small oasis crafted out of a wall of various plastic coolers, a full picnic table, and her children standing with flowers in their hands. Michael hung back by their things as Athena met May and Harry with arms open.

The day wasn’t exactly taxing--- even criminals seemed to be too busy pampering their mothers--- and if Athena wanted to jinx herself she would say the day was downright boring. But nothing beat being able to hold both her babies in her arms.

“How long did it take you to unload all of this?” Athena asked, pressing a kiss down onto Harry’s head.

“Don’t ask,” he groaned before wiggling out of her arms to return back to the bowl of chips sitting on the table.

“Happy Mothers' Day,” May said.

Athena hugged her tighter, inhaling the vanilla and honey scent of her hair as she kissed her temple. May would be gone this time next year and Athena wasn’t ready to let her leave. She would. May would go farther than Athena could’ve ever dreamed of but that didn’t mean she couldn’t hold on for just a minute longer. May seemed to sense that Athena was feeling overly sentimental and just leaned into the hug even more.

When they broke, Harry was already helping himself to the egg salad like he’d been starved since the day he was born.

“Save some for your mother.” Michael chided, moving the bowl out of reach. “Hey! Happy Mother’s Day.”

He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek before making space on their table for her to sit.

A tray of sandwiches with a turkey on wheat suspiciously missing center pieced their feast and Athena grabbed a ham on rye before loading her plate up.

“You really out did yourself, Michael,” Athena said. “Who are you planning on feeding all of these leftovers?”

She’d never quite felt so surrounded by food before and impressive was a bit of an understatement. There were at least three bowls of sweet, fresh cut fruit. Baggies of veggies piled high in a pyramid of greens and oranges and reds with a small bowl of dip saran wrapped to keep the bugs away. One cooler that’d been left closed probably had some kind of dessert and another cooler was filled with ice and way more drinks than four of them could finish.

“The left overs are being donated,” Michael said patiently as he passed the egg salad to May.

Athena hummed as she dug in for her lunch. She didn’t have a lot of time to eat on duty but that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the time she had.

“Please tell me Bobby is at home sleeping off his shift and not putting together a four-course meal.”

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she glanced down at it while pretending not to notice the conspicuous glances Harry and May shared.

**Buck:**

**_Could you come help me?_ **

Athena frowned. Last she checked with Buck, he’d been all set for his big date. She wiped a hand on her napkin, tucking it under the plate so it wouldn’t fly away with the cool, consistent breeze, and typed back.

**Athena:**

**_What’s wrong? Is it the sauce?_ **

His response was almost immediate which meant he’d probably been staring at the screen and waiting.

**Buck:**

**_Yes._ **

**_I can’t get it right._ **

Athena glanced at her watch. Four o’clock was a little early to be messing with food for a seven o’clock date but knowing Buck he’d probably wanted to practice. Bobby had figured out early on that keeping Buck’s hands busy kept him from overthinking which is why he’d started teaching Buck to cook in the first place. A few trial and errors here and there but Buck was more of a natural than he gave himself credit for. And the sauce wasn’t anything too taxing. There wasn’t really a way for it go wrong.

**Athena:**

**_Give me thirty minutes and I’ll call to walk you through it._ **

Again the response was immediate.

**Buck:**

**_Could you come over?_ **

“Everything all right?” Michael asked, catching Athena’s expression.

She waved off his concern with a sigh. “Yes. Buck’s just panicking about his date.”

“Buck?” Michael scoffed. “Worried about a date? You’d think they’d be as easy as drinking water for him.”

“Stop it!” Athena shushed him even though she couldn’t help but chuckle herself. “He really likes this person.”

Harry flicked a telling face at his father. “Told you she wouldn’t spill the beans.”

Athena arched a brow on her forehead and typed out her response.

“Don’t think I don’t know Henrietta called you so she could win the bet.”

Michael shrugged, not even bothering to deny it, and tossed a grape into his mouth.

**Buck:**

**_Please._ **

Athena stopped. Normally, she wouldn’t have time to make the trip over to Buck’s apartment and hang around for him to have her watching over his shoulder. Los Angeles may have been tamed for Mothers’ Day but once the sun went down it was an entirely different beast all together.

But there was something desperate in his messages that she couldn’t quite shake. She could’ve been reading far too into it but after the near breakdown he’d had over the frankly bare cards from his mom, the last thing she wanted was for him to be so stressed he twisted himself into knots and couldn’t enjoy his date.

**Athena:**

**_Give me two hours and I’ll stop by on my break._ **

**_Sound good?_ **

**Buck:**

**_Perfect._ **

* * *

“Wait,” Chim said as he dropped the box onto the table and hurried back to the door for the rest of their things. “So, Buck actually said I was his superior?”

He’d refused to let Maddie help despite her ‘Chimney I’m pregnant not armless’ routine. They’d already decided to look for a new place together but Chim wasn’t about to let his pregnant girlfriend sleep alone in an apartment all by herself. Besides, Maddie’s lease ender earlier than Chim’s. He wasn’t being clingy. He wasn't. 

What he was, though, was confused.

Maddie still looked upset but thankfully she’d calmed down enough after a rollercoaster of hurt tears and hormonal anger carried the story with her.

“I just… I’m confused where he would get that,” Chim said. “I mean I have seniority over how many years I’ve been in the house but I’m just the paramedic in charge. Why would you bring up rank?”

Maddie rolled her eyes as she unpacked some of her things. “Oh? You’re confused, Captain Chimney?”

Chim winced. Yeah, okay, not his best moment. But that’d been temporary.

“I’m just saying,” Chim tried. “It seems like an odd thing to bring up.”

Maddie slammed down the bag of pregnancy books they’d picked up the afternoon after they found out. “Yeah, well, he wasn’t wrong about the rest of it.”

“Maddie---”

“No, Buck’s right. I make everything about me. I-I came to Los Angeles and dropped all my problems on him after not speaking to him in three years. He was living with me when Doug attacked us. What would’ve happened if he’d been at the apartment instead of me?”

“Maddie,” Chim said when Maddie exhale and hid her face in her hands “You are an amazing older sister. I mean, we all tried but Buck was kind of aimless those first couple of months on the job. Then you came along and it was like we got to see a whole other Buck.”

Maddie’s eyes were red when she looked back up. “He’s right, though. I haven’t been there for him. I mean, I moved out of our parents’ house when he was five and I met Doug a year after that. I got married when he was sixteen and left again after that.”

“Yeah but you were still around.” Chim tried.

Maddie shook her head.

“Not really. Not in the way I should’ve been.”

She sniffed and pushed out another shaky wet exhale that didn’t stop the tears from pooling in her eyes. Chim reached over and grabbed the box of tissues. Ever since Maddie’s hormones had skyrocketed into the world of extreme, he’d been proactive in keeping a box in every room.

Maddie smiled at him something small and hurt as she took a tissue. He waited until she blew her nose and took another tissue before saying something that should’ve been unsaid but apparently needed to be made obvious to the Buckley family.

“Maddie, it wasn’t your job to mother your brother,” he said.

Maddie nodded. They’d had something along the lines of a similar talk before and it’d been excruciating even then to watch Maddie struggle with the weight on her shoulders that she’d gotten so used to carrying.

“Yeah but that doesn’t change the fact that I left him behind.” Maddie dabbed at her eyes with her tissue. “That I came back here and just dropped all my problems at his feet because I knew he’d pick up the baggage.”

And Chim couldn’t find it in himself to argue because that was also partially true. Buck was always tripping over himself to help even when he couldn’t. Chim didn’t see it at first, it was hard to look past the young, good looks and arrogant obliviousness from someone enjoying their twenties. But it was the little things that caught his attention and the big thing that solidified it for him. Buck never helped expecting a thank you. He just did it. It was both one of the kid’s best qualities and greatest weaknesses. Buck was willing to help everyone, no questions asked, and sometimes people took advantage of that. Even if they didn’t intend to like Maddie did when she first came to LA.

He sighed and curled his arms around Maddie, letting her lean against his chest to cry.

“Do you want me to talk to Buck?” He asked because even if he tried not to budge in on the bond between Buck and Maddie he would if it made her happy.

But Maddie shook her head.

“No. No, I think whatever is going on with his date and the cards... I think it’s just a lot for him.” She said. “He even brought up the truck bombing.”

That… was weird. Chim quirked his head to the side.

“What do you mean?”

Buck never talked about the bombing. Even when he’d been in discussions about his injuries it was always ‘the accident’. He claimed it was because he didn’t remember which Chim knew was a load of crap. They all did especially Bobby. But they all tried to respect his space and encourage him when he was making progress in his recovery. Then the pulmonary embolism happened and it just sort of drifted away with the last dredges of water from the tsunami. Filed away to compartmentalize for the next big thing in their lives.

“He was just lashing out. He didn’t mean it.” Maddie sighed as she pulled away.

That was even more weird because Buck was never harsh on purpose. He put his foot in his mouth _often_ but he never threw words out meant to cut.

“He was just going on about how myself and like Bobby couldn’t be there for him when the bomb almost took his leg or something. I don’t know.” Maddie shrugged and turned back to her unpacking. “I’ll talk to him when he calms down.”

She plucked through a small tote bag. “Which will be when I can drop off his bag of stuff from the hospital that’s been sitting in my car for months now.”

“Sorry,” Chim said. “I just saw it in the back. I must have grabbed it by mistake.”

Maddie waved him off before turning to give him a sweet kiss. “It’s fine.”

She checked the bag with a quick flick of her wrist before she stopped.

“What?” Chim asked when Maddie went rigid.

Maddie’s jaw clenched as she pulled out a sealed envelope. ‘Evan’ was looped on the front with black pen over soft lavender cardstock.

“Another one?”

Chim watched as Maddie silently peeled open the envelope with a jab of her finger and ripped out the card. It was another nice card with a water color painting of lilacs on the front and curvy handwriting on the inside. Maddie read the card before handing it over to Chim and digging in the bag some more.

_Dear Evan,_

_Congratulations! You did it. You came into this emergency room like a wounded bird with a broken wing and now you’re getting ready to walk out of with your head held high. You should be proud of every step of your recovery. I know I am. I know you feel more alone now more than ever but know that I will always be here for you._

_Xx Mom_

Maddie worked her jaw as she held up another form to Chimney. It was Buck’s discharge paperwork with instructions for his first week home.

“I don’t understand,” Chim said. “I thought your mom didn’t send these.”

“She didn’t,” Maddie said, her face furious. “But I have an idea who did.”

* * *

**Incoming call from: _Eddie_**

**Incoming call from: _Eddie_**

**Incoming call from: _Eddie_**

**Missed call from: _Eddie_**

**Voicemail from: _Eddie_**

_“Hey Buck. It’s me. Listen, I heard about the cards. I’m sorry man. That sucks…If you want… Look, give me a call when you can, okay?”_

Maddie knew what she looked like. The tension radiated from her temples in a long slope along her jaw and stretched her eyes into thin narrowing slits. Buck called them her laser eyes of death. All Maddie knew was that she was going to have a headache later when the tautness finally released. The nurse assigned to the desk kept shooting her worried glances as Maddie crossed her arms over her chest to keep from reading the letter in her hand again. The cardstock burned across her palm and seared the inkwork into her skin.

She’d been waiting for over twenty minutes.

She would wait as long as she needed to.

Jocelyn, Buck’s former nurse, pushed a thin strand of blonde hair out of her face as she strode through the sliding doors with a huff.

“What is it, Nina? I’ve got two surgery preps I have to---” Jocelyn followed Nina’s pointed finger directed at Maddie.

A flash of recognition crossed over her face.

“Oh,” Jocelyn said with a confused quirk of her lips. “You’re Evan Buckley’s sister? Right?”

Instead of answering, Maddie flung the card down onto the counter. Her palm still felt hot and clammy even once the thing was gone.

“How dare you?” Maddie seethed.

Jocelyn lifted a perfectly sculpted brow on her forehead. “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s not mine you should be begging for.”

Jocelyn blinked, her hands on her hips like she was about to scold Maddie but Maddie didn’t back down. She knew nurses like Jocelyn. Condescending and belittling. Someone who got off on being needed so much that their ego inflated like a balloon the size of the state of California.

“Ms. Buckley, I don’t know what you are---”

“Don’t you?” Maddie cut her off.

Jocelyn gaped at her and shot a look at Nina, the desk nurse, who had one hand hovering over the phone to call security no doubt.

Good. Maddie would have a great chat with them.

“Ms. Buckley, I’m sorry. But---”

“How could you do something like that? Do you even realize what you’ve done?”

A hot flush crawled up Jocelyn’s face when she realized that Maddie’s feet might as well have been cemented to the floor. But like Maddie said, she’d met nurses like Jocelyn before. She’d navigated the emergency room floor with nurses like Jocelyn. Nurses like Jocelyn didn’t scare Maddie.

“I don’t have time for this. I have patients that need---”

“What? Are you going to pretend to be their mothers and stalk them too?” Maddie asked loud enough to hint at a scene before lowering her voice. “I know it was you. Your handwriting is all over my brother’s discharge paperwork.”

Jocelyn shook her head at Nina and stepped closer to Maddie with a sigh.

“Perhaps we can go somewhere more private?” Jocelyn asked but Maddie shook her head.

“No. I don’t have a lot more to say. Your manager and Human Resources will be enough.”

“I never meant to harm, Evan.” Jocelyn insisted.

“Well, you did.”

Something sharp and angry cut across Jocelyn’s expression and she curled her fists at her side.

“And what would you know?”

“Excuse me?” Maddie asked.

“You were barely here. None of you were. Not when it mattered. Not when it counted. And when you were here all you did was lecture, Evan. You didn’t let him grieve. You didn’t let him process what he’d been through. You dismissed him. All of you especially that so called team of his.” Jocelyn’s fury forced her words to hiss past her teeth and she flung hand towards herself. “I was there. I was there when he needed someone.”

Maddie shook her head, hating that the anger that fueled her righteous outrage was starting to crest into tears again. “You’re wrong.”

Jocelyn scoffed.

“Am I? Did he tell you about the nightmares? The first few days when the doctor’s start to ween you off the pain medicine where all you feel is metal in your leg? I saw you all that first night. How you swept it under the rug? You would have rather circle around what happened than deal with the consequences of that fire captain’s actions. Well, Evan didn’t get that chance. I understood him when none of you tried.”

Maddie stepped back, painfully aware of the silence that’d settled over them.

“You are way out of line---”

“And you abandoned him.” Jocelyn bit out before she smirked.

Maddie inhaled, shoving a knuckle under her eye to wipe her tear.

“You may be right. Maybe I did,” she said before she stepped back into Jocelyn’s space and wiped off the smirk. “But you did something far worse. You gave him hope.”

She snatched the card back and turned to Nina.

“You can call security now,” Maddie said. “I’ll wait.”

* * *

**Buck:**

**_Perfect._ ** _  
04:01pm_

**_Door is open._ ** _  
06:12pm_

When Athena walked through Buck’s door, she expected to be met with the hurried smells of a working stove. Chicken seasoned just right with a hint of chargrilled burn baking in the oven to melt the thick scent of cheese and olive oil. Sour pomegranate and the overly sweet twist of balsamic turned wrong because that was the tricky part of the sauce.

She was met with a slamming of something completely wrong.

If you asked Athena, Los Angeles should be the city of scents. Years driving the streets had familiarized her nose with the discord of aromas. Hot, sun beaten black top on every corner. Elotes covered in chili powder mixed with sand and the curling salt of the ocean. Car exhausts over worked. Concrete dust pluming from the construction on the freeway. The overburnt smell of coffee. Hairspray and cheap cologne. You couldn’t walk three feet without stumbling face first into one of those perfumes of the city and Athena had savored them all. Sometimes, they blended into one another and twisted around under the smell of urine from an alley as a cutting cleansing of the palate. Sometimes, they were a world of their own.

But there was never the mistaking of the coppery, rancid smell of blood.

Athena unclipped her gun and grabbed her radio on instinct.

“I have a gun to his head.”

Athena froze as the voice punched through the eerie silence of Buck’s apartment. It was familiar in the way that you could predict the melody of a song you never fully heard on the radio. But there wasn’t a face to put to the familiarity.

“Let go of your radio, come into the apartment, close the door, and put your hands in the air. In that order or I will pull the trigger.”

“Okay!” Athena said, fulling aware of the closed spaced trap she was walking into but she couldn’t see Buck anywhere.

She couldn’t hear him.

She wasn’t about to take the risk of walking back and taking cover when the smell of blood was so drowning.

“Okay,” Athena said again. “I’m closing the door. “

Athena lifted her arms and closed the door with the back of her heel.

“Walk to the table,” the voice ordered.

Athena clenched her jaw and kept her movements slow and deliberate as she stepped towards Buck’s dining room table. It should’ve been set for two but the tabletop was bare and smudged from too many people touching it.

“Put your belt and your radio on the table.”

Athena tried to peek around the staircase with her peripheral but the voice was too far back to see. She unclipped her radio from her uniform and undid the buckle at her hip. The belt dipped off her waist and felt like a lead weight in her hand as she lifted it to the table.

“Get your handcuff and walk towards us,” The voice directed. “ _Slowly.”_

A bit off groan seized all the heat from Athena’s spine.

“All right,” she said through an exhale, trying to keep some of the panic from her voice.

She kept one hand up and took out her handcuffs before she lifted that one as well.

“Walk towards us,” the voice repeated and Athena bit her tongue.

She put the table between them and walked with more determined steps before what she was met with stopped her in her stride.

Seeing Ellie Costas pointing at gun at a bloody, bruised Buck was going to haunt Athena’s nightmares for years to come.

Ellie Costas was like a recurring nightmare in human form standing with Buck at her feet. Her hair was still dark and beautifully long but the strands cascaded around a thinning, hollow face that was stricken with aged grief. Permanent shadows circled under her eyes against pale skin that looked like it hadn’t seen the sun in weeks. She looked the same and so completely changed.

No one said anything. Ellie simply watched as Athena took Buck in with a horrified jerking of her eyes. Buck’s hands were zip tied in front of him with a thick piece of cloth pulling taunt at his cheeks and tied around his head.

There wasn’t an inch of Buck’s face that wasn’t covered in blood or bruises.

“Stop,” Ellie commanded and Athena did.

Buck’s eye was swollen shut and drooping and his other eye, which was watching her, wasn’t much better off. Blood was caking one of his eyebrows and curled around the shell of his eye socket, mixing with more blood from a gash that was sluggishly bleeding from his hairline. An angry bruise bridged across his nose and onto his cheek like someone’s fist had slid right across his face. His mouth, from what she could see past the gag, was cracked with a split on his lip that was so long it reached down into the concave where mouth meets chin and would need a serious amount of stitches.

And that was just his face.

Obvious taser burns colored where neck met clavicle. Bruises wrapped around his arms, his wrists raw against the hard plastic of the zip ties, and blood trailed in paths down from his elbows. The gauze wrapped around his burn from his cliffside rescue the day before was nothing but a dirty rag hanging onto his skin.

Had it only been a day since she’d picked him up from the emergency room?

“Buck,” Athena breathed out when her chest became too tight from holding the name in.

Buck’s one open eye jerked at his name.

“Handcuff yourself to the stairwell,” Ellie said.

Cold, provoked rage snapped Athena out of the numbing shock and she cut a glare up at Ellie.

“You must be out of your mind.”

Ellie grabbed a fist full of Buck’s hair and wrenched his head back until the gun pressed against the crown of his skull.

“Handcuff yourself to the stairwell,” Ellie repeated.

She spoke each word with pointed, contained restraint but what truly concerned Athena was the dull, featureless expression on Ellie’s face. The last time Athena had seen her, she’d been in tears as her son was led off, shackled in federal issued handcuffs and shipped out of their lives for good. The sobbing had been uncontrollable as Freddie’s life officially ended that day when he was sentenced to federal prison for life without the possibility of parole and Athena had felt sorry for her.

She’d pitied her as she watched a mother essentially outlive their child.

Now, with her hand twisting Buck’s hair until he grimaced, Ellie was unfeeling and Athena's pity evaporated.

Athena stepped over and slapped her cuff onto the railing of the stairwell that led to Buck’s loft before cuffing her fisted hand with the other.

“Tighter,” Ellie demanded.

Athena pushed the handcuff down a click.

Ellie yanked on Buck’s hair until a bleated, wet sound punched from Buck’s chest.

“Tighter.”

Athena pushed the handcuff down another click and hissed as the cold steel already started to numb her hand. Ellie watched Athena for a moment, her face blank, and then dropped Buck.

Buck gasped and dropped back onto his heels, dipping his head down and away from her hands. Wordlessly, Ellie undid the knot at the back of Buck’s head and pulled the cloth free from his mouth.

“I’m sorry…’Thena,” Buck choked out, his voice wobbly and slurred.

Buck must have been dosed with something because when he tried to meet her gaze his pupil was almost black with the one eye he had open. That or concussed which, given the state of Buck’s face, wasn’t unimaginable.

Ellie pushed his head down and Buck jerked beneath her touch. “Stop talking.”

The handcuff attached to Athena’s wrist rattled as she reached out. Her inattentiveness lapsed into a sharp clang of clarity as the world shifted beneath her feet and the reality of dread slammed into her. Ellie ignored her and folded the blood-stained cloth as she walked away, detached from the distraught mother Athena had once seen her.

“What are we doing here, Ellie?” Athena bit out but Ellie continued to ignore her.

She dragged Athena’s belt across the table with a heavy scratch that Athena could barely hear over the thundering in her ears.

“You have me now. Let Buck go!”

Buck’s forehead was pressed against the floor but he shook his head with a huff.

“I still need him,” Ellie said distantly, pulling Athena’s gun from her holster and settling it onto the kitchen counter.

“What for?”

Ellie turned towards her, her eyebrow arched high onto her forehead, and the first sign of _something_ sparking in her eyes as she glared at her. “He’s a part of this now.”

Athena could feel Buck watching her but she kept her focus on Ellie.

“A part of what? Buck’s never done anything to your family.”

Ellie shrugged, a shadow of a human being, and all together ambivalent towards the fact that Buck was still bleeding on the floor. “You heard what Freddie said. Collateral damage.”

Her glare turned vicious as she cocked her jaw.

“You remember my son,” she said. “The one you took away from me. The one that is going to rot in prison because of you.”

“Freddie made his choices, Ellie,” Athena snapped. “He made his own choices.”

“Because you _pushed us there!”_ Ellie’s voice reached into a shriek and Buck’s whole body flinched. “You and your husband are the reason my son didn’t have his father. You have killed my son. He was supposed to go to college and get married and outlive me. But now---”

“Your son killed innocent people.”

“From the way I see it, the only innocent person in all of this is him.”

Buck grimaced before he ducked his head back against his shoulder and away from Ellie's pointed finger. Blood smeared across the floor with the motion and Athena bit down on the rage that threatened to suffocate her. It was too much like that awful night where Buck’s screams broke through the murkiness of adrenaline thunderclaps as they tried to lift the truck off of him and she hated it. Hated it for its similarities and hated it for its abruptness.

No one had woken up that day thinking they were going to come face to face with a bomb.

Athena didn’t expect when she had been eating lunch with her children that she would be here in this sludge of retaliation. The Costas family was like a whirlpool of damage and they kept sucking everyone in no matter who was in the water.

“So, then let Buck go. He needs a hospital,” she said evenly. “You have me and if you say he’s the only innocent one here then let Buck go.”

But Ellie shook her head.

“No.” She reached down and pulled Buck up by the scruff of his shirt onto his knees again. “You should feel lucky that I picked him.”

Buck went up without a fight but let out of huff of a whine as his face flinched in pain.

Athena’s mouth went dry and she narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”

“I’ve been watching you. I’ve been watching all of you for months now. You’re living your lives like-like-like normal while Freddie…” Ellie stopped with a stuttering wet inhale. She smothered a sob against her hand and Athena almost felt sorry for her.

Almost.

Then she opened her mouth again.

“I could have so easily picked one your children. But I’m not a monster like you.” Athena jerked against the handcuff again, feeling the jolt of pain run all the way up to her elbow that was nothing compared to the fury that overtook her at the mention of her children out of that deranged woman’s mouth.

Ellie smirked at her and shook her head. “I wouldn’t harm a child. No. I picked him because he’s already damaged. I’ve seen how he lives his life. Alone. No one will miss him. Except you.”

A different kind of pain flashed across Buck’s face at that.

“I picked the broken thing for a necessary evil. You should be thanking me.” Ellie spat out before she lifted her gun back to Buck’s head. “I’m going to make you watch as I kill him and then I’m going to kill you and wait until Captain Nash finds your bodies.”

Buck flinched at the sound of the safety snapping off and Athena fought against her cuff again.

“Ellie stop!”

The blankness fell back over Ellie’s face. “Say your goodbyes, Sergeant Grant,”

“Buck!” Athena shouted, reaching forward for him as Buck tried to lean away from Ellie.

“Please…” He whispered but Ellie yanked him back against her.

“At least I let you say goodbye. I didn’t even get that.”

“Buck!”

And Ellie pulled the trigger without so much as a blink.

* * *

**Incoming call from: _Bobby_**

**Incoming call from: _Bobby_**

**Incoming call from: _Bobby_**

**Missed call from: _Bobby_**

**Voicemail from: _Bobby_**

**_“_ ** _Hey, hon it’s me. Hope you’re having a good shift. I just wanted to make sure you were still planning on being off at eight. Call me later. Stay safe. I love you.”_

****

* * *

**Incoming call from: _Maddie_**

**Incoming call from: _Maddie_**

**Incoming call from: _Maddie_**

**Missed call from: _Maddie_**

**Voicemail from: _Maddie_**

_“Buck, I know you’re mad but I need to talk to you. It’s important. Call me back.”_

* * *

**From May:**

**_Tam called back and had to reschedule us Saturday. I figured that was fine._ **

****

****

* * *

**From Chim:**

**_Good luck on the date tonight_ _Buckaroo!_ ** _  
11:58am_

 **_Call your sister before she goes crazy._ ** _  
11:59am_

 **_Or makes me crazy._ ** _  
12:00pm_

**_Buck, come on man._ ** _  
06:38pm_

 **_Call your sister._ ** _  
06:38pm_

****

****

* * *

**From Bobby:**

**_Let me know when you’re heading home and I’ll get dinner started._ **

****

* * *

**Incoming call from: _Maddie_**

**Incoming call from: _Maddie_**

**Incoming call from: _Maddie_**

**Missed call from: _Maddie (3)_**

**Incoming call from: _Bobby_**

**Incoming call from: _Bobby_**

**Incoming call from: _Bobby_**

**Missed call from: _Bobby_**

**Missed call from: _Maddie (3)_**

**Missed call from: _Eddie_**

* * *

_Click._

Athena reeled back as if all the air had been punched out of her and she dropped as far into a crouch as her shackled hand would let her.

“That was for Freddie,” Ellie said hauntingly.

Buck collapsed onto the ground again and didn’t move for what felt like eternity.

“Buck,” Athena gasped out, her thundering heart making everything sound like it was under water.

Then Buck rolled his head and blinked at her before his face crumpled. The only thing keeping the sob that hitched in his chest was the hard latch of his teeth against his lip. He shuffled until he could pull his hands out from under him and tried to reach towards her.

Empty. The gun had been empty the whole time.

“Buck,” Athena breathed out and reached for him as well.

The relief was nauseating in its resuscitation of the alarming situation they were still in.

“’Thena,” Buck stammered out. “I-I don’t---”

Ellie snatched Buck by the collar again and dragged Buck away leaving Athena’s hand grasping at empty air.

“Ellie!” Athena shouted. “Ellie stop this! Stop it right now. You got what you wanted. I---”

“You don’t even understand the half of it. I said that was for Freddie. You ripped his life away like a blip. My son. My baby---”

“Your child was a monster!” Athena finally lashed out. “He killed innocent people. He hurt people who had nothing to do with what happened with your family. You both have blamed everyone but the one person who did this to you.”

Ellie stared at Athena, her hand drifting towards Buck’s hair where she was almost caressing his matted curls with her fingers. Buck shuddered beneath her touch but kept his gaze locked on Athena. He looked exhausted, too tired to be scared anymore, and looking to Athena like she knew what to do. It was so stunning how familiar that expression was. She’d seen it on his face the night after his car had been stolen and she’d convinced him to sleep on her couch. She’d put up with it when she’d helped him plan out the visit his parents never showed up for. She’d faced it at the restaurant when he’d admitted just how painful it was to be disappointed before he even had the chance to hope.

It was trust in its purest form and it was so endearingly Buck.

“It’s funny you should mention Victor,” Ellie said, bending over to grab something that Athena couldn’t see without breaking eye contact with Buck. “Freddie didn’t have a chance but my husband… He died slowly. So, now you’ll get to watch that too.”

Then, before Buck could take a breath, she covered his face with clear stretch wrap and wound the plastic around his head over and over and over and over and over again. Buck jolted as he sucked in a mouthful of plastic. Ellie shoved down his hands before twisting her fingers back into his curls and curling the roll of plastic around his head. Buck lurched, suffocating in his own panic, and the sounds he made were indescribable. Ellie wrapped until the roll was empty and then shoved Buck to the floor where he jerked trying to free the obstruction over his face but unable to do anything but claw uselessly at the plastic.

“He gets to die slowly too,” Ellie said.

Athena’s thumb popped and sent pain skyrocketing through her arm but she was already lunging towards Ellie before her hand slipped through her cuff.

* * *

Maddie hung up her phone with an aggravated huff and got out of the car.

“Whoa,” Chim said, hurrying to follow after her. “Where are you going? He didn’t answer.”

“He didn’t answer because he’s ignoring me but he needs to hear this.”

Maddie turned onto the sidewalk and headed towards Buck’s apartment with a determined set in her shoulders. Buck could be mad at her all he wanted but he needed to know who was sending him those cards. Chim skidded around to step in front of her.

“Hold on, Maddie,” Chim said. “The last time you talked to Buck you both ended up really upset.”

“Thank you. I was there for that.” Maddie snapped back and then winced. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Chim waved her off. “I’m just meant that you’re pregnant and it’s been a long day. Maybe you should---”

Maddie frowned and peered around Chim.

“Eddie?”

Eddie stopped, his mouth dropping open and his eyes widening as he gaped at the two of them.

“Uh…” He said.

“What are you doing here?” Chim asked.

Color shifted up into Eddie’s face as he opened and closed his mouth with a sharp click of his jaw.

“Oh,” Maddie gasped. “My God!”

If his expression wasn’t a dead giveaway then everything from the nice fleece pullover draped over dark jeans to the cologne Maddie’s pregnant nose could smell all the way over had to be.

“What?” Chim asked, not getting it.

“Oh my God!” Maddie repeated. “I knew it!”

“Wait…” Chim drew out, turning between the two of them before pointing a finger at Eddie. “It was you the whole time!”

“I was just… uh…” Eddie hooked a thumb over his shoulder and teetered on his heels when he couldn’t seem to find the right words for an excuse. “I…um…”

Chim’s jaw was going to come unhinged if he opened his mouth any further.

Maddie’s eyes narrowed in on the white carnation sitting amongst the bottles of the six pack in his hand. She bit her lip but it was no use to the grin that pulled high into her cheeks.

“Did you bring Buck a flower?” She asked.

Eddie’s blush crawled all the way up his face and disappeared into his hairline.

“He likes---” Eddie stopped when Chim wheezed as all coherent thought seemed to escape him.

Maddie smacked Chim’s arm as Eddie’s bafflement turned into an exasperated glare.

“You know what? Never mind.” Eddie swiped a hand in front of him as if the motion alone could clear the uncomfortable swamp of awkward he was standing in and Maddie smacked Chim again when something close to a _guffaw_ escaped Chim’s lips. “Why are you here?”

“Buck told me that he didn’t have a date tonight.”

“Well,” Eddie drew out and lifted the six pack. “We do. Unless he forgot to tell---”

The crack that slapped across the air was like lightning striking glass and shattering it. Maddie let out a yelp as she clapped her hands over her ears and flinched when Chim pulled her down. Eddie jerked low and dropped his six pack, sending pieces of beer bottles into splinters against the concrete.

Maddie’s heart felt like it was going to burst out of her chest. Chim’s palms were too hot on her skin and she could feel his pulse beating in time with her own.

“Was that---” Chim gasped out.

“---Gun shot.” Eddie finished.

Maddie met Eddie’s gaze and watched as he mirrored her horror as they both followed the ricocheted echo back towards Buck’s building. Eddie rocked onto his toes and turned into a sprint into the building. Maddie tilted as if to follow but Chim swung himself in front of her and pushed her back.

“Maddie, stay here and call 9-1-1.”

Maddie shook her head and tried to get around Chim. “I should---”

But Chim stopped her.

“Maddie,” he said again. “Stay here.”

He moved his hand down her arm and covered her own with his palm. Her hand was pressed against her stomach protectively. She didn’t even realize she’d done it until the warmth of Chim’s hand settled over her knuckles.

Buck was inside. The gunshot had been from Buck’s building. Alarm bells were ringing in her ears and she knew something was wrong. Something was terribly, terribly wrong with her brother and she needed to go in.

But she couldn’t.

Maddie swallowed and pulled out her phone, stepping back towards the car and dialing.

“Okay.”

* * *

_“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”_

_“This is off duty dispatcher Maddie Buckley. Badge number 873951. I need LAPD and possibly a RA unit. There’s a probable active shooting incident at a residence. I’m outside but there are two off duty firefighters and a paramedic inside.”_

_“What’s your location?”_

* * *

**Incoming call from: _Chimney_**

**Incoming call from: _Chimney_**

**Incoming call from: _Chimney_**

Something sour settled in Bobby’s gut that twisted in all the dark places he didn’t visit often as he answered the phone.

“Hey Chim,” he barely got out before Chimney rushed to say the one sentence he dreaded hearing every day since he decided to go on living.

“Bobby, you need to get to the hospital.”

* * *

Maddie’s fingertip was like a hummingbird in slow motion across his skin. He’d know it anywhere. She always did it unconsciously. Soft, continuous movements dancing a path from his knuckle to just below his wrist joint. She’d done it when he’d made a habit of running into her room late at night because of bad dreams and had complained that his hands were too sweaty to hold all night. It’d been a compromise when a clingy five-year-old Buck hadn’t wanted to let Maddie go.

The flight path of her soothing touch warmed his too cold skin and he hummed out a sigh of coherence. Maddie’s finger trailed down until her hand could curl around his and squeezed. He squeezed back and lounged in the feeling of comfort for a few more moments before he blinked awake.

One eye didn’t open.

The sizzling of pain spread across his face and the memory of those hummingbird touches faded away as the clarity of recollection crashed into him like a wave he couldn’t out run.

Buck shuddered out a pitched whine that caught in the rough chords in his throat.

“Hey,” Maddie said, leaning so he could see her with his one open eye. “It’s okay. Try not to move too much.”

That wasn’t going to be a problem. Buck didn’t think he could sit up let alone move. The problem was the tension of the day snapping off him and sending him tumbling into uncontrollable trembling that beat out of time with his heartbeat.

Maddie.

He didn’t think he’d see her again.

“I’m sorry,” Buck croaked out, not even caring that he was crying. “Maddie, I’m so sorry.”

Maddie shook her head and brushed a hand against his hair. She’d forgotten it but Buck couldn’t. No. He couldn’t.

“I-I-I didn’t mean any of it. I’m so sorry. Maddie I-I d-didn’t--- She was there and she was---” Pain flared up from his chest and a whine slipped past his lips. “I had to get you to leave. She-she-she was behind the door and I-I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Buck,” Maddie said, her voice soft as a whistle in the wind.

Buck shook his head. "Athena? W-wha... Where's Athena? Is she..."

Everything was spinning and Buck felt like he was floating but Maddie was there. Maddie was spinning with him. But he couldn't breathe or he could but he was breathing too fast and his lungs couldn't keep up and---

“Buck,” Maddie said again. “You have to calm down. Everything’s going to be all right but you need to calm down.”

Buck couldn't though. Where was Athena? What had he done? He couldn't calm down. Something was beeping somewhere and he couldn't hear Maddie. He couldn't see Maddie. He was alone and he... Athena... Where---

Everything seemed to crash all at once around him and not a sound could be heard except for the sharp cut of his own rushing breath in his ears.


End file.
